


cascading waters heal all

by serenfire



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: M/M, permenantly disabled Finn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-23
Updated: 2015-12-23
Packaged: 2018-05-08 17:04:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5505887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/serenfire/pseuds/serenfire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Can you move your leg muscles?”</p><p>Finn squeezes his eyes shut, his lifeline solely Poe’s grip on his hands.</p><p>He imagines running through the forest to get as far as possible away from Starkiller Base. He imagines turning Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber on, tripping over the uneven footsteps on the snowy ground as he battles Kylo Ren.</p><p>“Are they moving?” he asks.</p><p>Poe squeezes his hand tighter. “No.” It’s almost a sob.</p>
            </blockquote>





	cascading waters heal all

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired all of two and a half hours ago by all the fics I saw of Finn in physical therapy, and I thought what if there was no recovery to original strength? What if there was some spinal cord damage? What if I wrote about internal healing instead?
> 
> Note: I am not physically disabled, and I hope that I have treated the subject with as much respect as I possibly can. (This isn't a fic where the ""happy ending"" is Finn not being disabled any more, because that would be the most unsatisfying and ridiculous outcome I could ever imagine.)
> 
> Also, two fic updates in one day? Must be a Christmas miracle.
> 
> Enjoy!
> 
> @anyone I know irl: do not read thanks

Finn wakes to the sound of a heart monitor’s incessant beeping. The grogginess in his brain lulls his head back down on his pillow when he tries to sit up. 

“Stay still,” someone in a gray-and-red jacket says, their outline blurry. Desperate hands push him back onto the bed. “You need to heal.” 

“I need to wake up,” Finn mumbles, words slurring together. There is something he’s missing. Something like — Rey? 

“What about Rey?” he says, reaching out with a hand that has fallen asleep. Sharp twangs radiate up his arm, and he winces. 

“Rey is fine,” the ethereal voice says. “Go back to sleep, Finn.” 

* 

Finn wakes again, and the lighting is hushed inside the medic tent. He blinks his eyes open, and with the hand not hooked up to IVs, he wipes the sleep out of his eyes. 

He weakly grabs the railings of the bed to haul himself up to a sitting position, and pain explodes in his shoulders. 

He doesn’t remember crying out in pain, but the next thing Finn sees is Poe Dameron standing over the bed, bags under his eyes and wearing his jacket. 

“Hey, don’t try to move, buddy,” Poe says, grabbing Finn’s hand and easing him back down to a lying position. “I think this bed can move on its own.” He grabs a remote and presses a button. The hospital bed folds up so Finn isn’t lying completely flat. 

“You’re wearing your jacket,” Finn notes, not without some hesitancy. Poe had said Finn could have it, so what does that mean? 

“I mean, it’s your jacket now,” Poe says, shrugging. “I was just, ah — avoiding putting it in the laundry. I guess it kind of smells like you now.” 

Finn laughs. “Why would you care if it smells like me?” 

Poe grins and looks off in the distance at the heart rate monitor, cheeks coloring. “It was pretty touch and go there for a while,” he admits. “But you’re all fine now.” 

They haven’t let go of each other’s hand. 

“Really?” Finn frowns. “I thought I would die in the forest. I thought — Rey won the battle, didn’t she?” 

Poe nods, grinning. “She saved the Resistance.” 

“Awesome. How long have I been out?” 

“Three days.” 

Finn frowns, twisting around to try and reach his the wound carving up his shoulder blades. “Is my back fine?” 

Poe’s grin falters. “Yeah,” he says, holding Finn’s hand tighter. “You’re fine.” 

“Is something wrong?” 

Poe plasters another smile on his face. “Nope,” he says, avoiding Finn’s eyes. “Everything is going to be fine. Now go back to bed. You need your beauty sleep.” 

Finn hums, but nods anyway. The pain medicine makes his eyes blur and his tongue fuzz almost pleasantly, and his stress melts away. 

* 

The next morning, the doctor explains that they don’t know the internal damage done to him by Kylo Ren. “Your back will heal externally of its own accord soon enough,” she explains. “But we don’t have the equipment on-site to X-ray you.” 

“Why not?” Poe says. Last night, he slept on the ground next to Finn’s bed. The few times Finn woke up with a nightmare on his lips, Poe’s incessant snoring put him back to sleep. 

The doctor looks at Poe like he missed an important detail. “We were preparing to evacuate the base because D’Qar was about to explode. All of our specialized equipment is still in deep storage, and it will take a while to unpack. However, a hands-on approach still tests all your motor functions.” 

The doctor produces a knee jerk mallet. “Have you ever had an involuntary knee reflex?” she asks as she swings Finn’s legs carefully off the bed. 

“I don’t know,” Finn shrugs. “I was never checked for it in any medical ward.” 

The doctor hums and taps on his knees. Finn feels the IV meds numbing his fingers and arms and working magic on his back, watching as his legs swing listlessly without a response. 

A sinking feeling wells in his stomach. “I can’t feel that,” he says. 

The doctor taps lower on his leg, along his tibia. “Can you feel it now?” she asks. 

Finn shakes his head. Poe grabs his hand, the expression on his face unreadable. 

The doctor moves the mallet up his knee, along his thigh. “Tell me when you can feel it,” she says. 

Finn waits, dread seeping into his every pore. When the mallet hits his upper thighs, he nods. “Now.” 

The doctor stands up. “Well,” she says, the comments half directed at Poe, “it’s not for certain, but the saber wound could have pierced enough of his spinal cord to render his nerves useless. Can you move your leg muscles?” 

Finn squeezes his eyes shut, his lifeline solely Poe’s grip on his hands. 

He imagines running through the forest to get as far as possible away from Starkiller Base. He imagines turning Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber on, tripping over the uneven footsteps on the snowy ground as he battles Kylo Ren. 

“Are they moving?” he asks. 

Poe squeezes his hand tighter. “No.” It’s almost a sob. 

Finn lets go of his hand and covers his eyes. It may not be medically certain, but he can’t move his legs. He can’t feel his legs. 

“Is there anything you can do?” he asks. 

The doctor purses her lips. “We can perform a surgery to rewire the nerves, once we unpack our specialized equipment. That’s only if your nerves are only severed, not fried or completely disconnected. And the same requirements go for your muscle fibers.” 

“When’s the soonest you can do it?” Poe asks as Finn is floating in shock. 

The doctor hums. “A week,” she says. 

“We’ll take it.” 

* 

They give Finn an ancient wheelchair for the time being and keep him on IV pain medicine. He can’t move himself around, as he carries the pole on wheels from which his IV hangs off of. So Poe wheels him around. 

Poe also picks Finn up and puts him in the wheelchair. 

“I can do it myself,” Finn protests, but when he reaches out to stabilize himself with his arms, they collapse and he almost falls off the bed. 

Poe catches him. “Easy, bud,” he grins. “You need to work up your arm strength.” And then he, demonstrating his own arm strength, picks Finn up bridal-style and deposits him in the chair. 

“Where do you want to go first?” he asks. 

“I don’t know,” Finn admits. “I just want to go somewhere I can forget about this.” 

Poe grins. “Mess hall it is, then.” 

* 

The mess hall turns out to be a gambling den in its off hours. X-Wing pilots sit around circular tables, some in their unzipped orange jumpsuits and others in a myriad of casual clothing. 

“Dameron!” they call to Poe as he enters the dimly lit cavern, wheeling in Finn. “Join us for a round.” 

“Only if Finn can join too,” Poe says, and Finn’s about to protest, mumble that he doesn’t want to draw attention to himself, not before the surgery — 

The pilots laugh. “Finn? Savior of the Resistance Finn? Ex-stormtrooper Finn? Poe’s hottest crush ever Finn? Of course he can join.” 

Finn blushes at the last comment. “Oh no,” he protests. “We’re not —” 

“Try telling us you’re not hot for Dameron when you’re not completely high,” one Twi’lek pilot recommends with a wink as Poe wheels Finn up to the table. “Maybe it will be more convincing.” 

Poe drags a stool up and sits next to Finn. “Don’t pay attention to them,” he whispers, but his face is angled away like he’s making an expression he doesn’t want Finn to see. “They tease everyone. Do you know how to play chess?” 

Finn scrunches up his face. “Er, yes?” 

* 

The meds make him exhausted at all hours of the day. Sometimes he sleeps in his wheelchair, dozing off while still holding his IV pole. He will wake up in Poe’s bed in Poe’s room, listening to the other man snoring on the floor. 

Sometimes he wakes up too early, while Poe still carries him from whatever corner of the Resistance base Finn has nodded off in. 

“Thank you,” he says, grabbing Poe’s arm in the half delirious moments when he wants nothing else but to forget it all ever happened. “Thank you for doing this.” 

Poe grins. “I’d do anything,” he promises softly in the fleeting darkness. “I’d do anything for you, Finn.” 

* 

Poe wheels Finn to a D’Qar waterfall, and they sit and watch it in silence. Finn has never been outside of an Imperial Star Destroyer long enough to enjoy planetside scenery, and the water lapping at the rocks and crashing into the river below is relaxing. 

Poe stands beside him, dressed in green camo and his (now Finn’s) jacket. Every time Finn sees him in it, he itches to reach out and ask for it back, but he’s already so indebted to Poe, he can’t ask for anything more. 

“So much better than Jakku,” Finn laughs, shaking his head. The water is life and renewal, the jungle damp and dewy. He feels almost home. 

“You can cleanse yourself from the rainforest, but the desert stays with you forever,” Poe says in agreement. His fingers find Finn’s, and they stay in peaceful silence. 

By the time the mess hall opens for dinner, Poe is halfway through the ten minute ordeal of pushing Finn and accompanying IV pole back to the base. 

“Why can’t the Resistance have hover wheelchairs?” Finn groans. “Then it would be easier for all parties.” A knot forms in his stomach as he says it, though. He shouldn’t care — not if he will be fixed in a few days. Not if he will be free of the scars the Dark Side left on him. 

Poe laughs, and pushes Finn’s wheelchair over the upturned tree roots. “Without New Republic backing, we have zero funding,” he explains. “Besides, every time a soldier is injured like this, they usually just go home, where there is government-sponsored healthcare. But for you…” 

“I don’t have a home,” Finn says, a clench in his jaw. He doesn’t have a home, and therefore he’s stuck with the only people who will take him in. 

“Well, neither do I,” Poe says lightly. “They’re all dead.” He puts a comforting hand on Finn’s shoulder as he controls the wheelchair’s descent through the forest. 

* 

The night before the promised surgery, Finn can’t sleep, even on Poe’s mattress. 

Near midnight, Poe crawls in next to him, pulling the covers over himself and grabbing onto Finn’s hand. “You should have this back,” Poe says, and hands him the gray and red jacket, positioning it over Finn like a blanket. 

“Thank you.” 

“Whatever happens tomorrow, you’re not a better or worse person because of it. You know that, right?” Poe stares at Finn, and in the darkness, Finn can almost believe he means it. 

“Right.” 

It must be obviously lackluster, because Poe huffs. “I need to hear you say it,” he urges. “I need you to tell me you know you’re the same person, with or without the use of your legs.” 

Finn squeezes Poe’s hand in his own. Holding his hand feels so right, so much like — home. 

“Okay,” Finn says, throat scratchier than before. “I’m the same me, whether or not the surgery works tomorrow.” He doesn’t make it through the sentence before he starts crying, throat burning and tears falling freely down his cheeks. 

Poe hands him some TP instead of tissues, and wraps an arm awkwardly around Finn as he cries. 

“But I want to walk,” Finn says in a whisper. “I don’t want that battle and my failure to be with me forever.” 

“Then don’t let it stay with you forever,” Poe says. “Even if either outcome isn’t under your control, you can still choose to not let it stick with you.” 

“How?” 

“Well,” hums Poe, “when I was nine, my mother died in service to the Rebel Alliance. My father died not too long after, and I was raised by my grandfather. He was the only one in my family so far to die of old age. And here I am, testing fate by serving the Resistance anyway. I’m so close to death every time I get in the X-Wing, and it haunts me at night.” 

“But you don’t let it get to you?” 

“That’s right,” Poe says, a wistful glance on his face. “I know that there are lives I’m saving, like I did yours. That’s motivation enough for me to risk it all every day.” 

They stay like that for a while, listening to each other breathe. 

* 

Finn grabs a fistful of Poe’s shirt and kisses him before he’s wheeled off into surgery. He knows he doesn’t imagine the shocked smile and hesitant wave back as he is leaves on the gurney. 

Finn prays to everyone, anyone out there: please let this work. 

* 

He wakes up groggily from the surgery in what amounts for an outpatient room. It’s the same space he woke up after his brush with death. 

Poe even sits in the corner, arms wrapped around his legs, staring holes into the wall. 

“Hey,” Finn coughs, and Poe is on him in an instant, shoving his jacket at Finn to cover him like a blanket again. “How — how did it go?” 

Poe squeezes Finn’s hand and looks at him with an apologetic smile. “They didn’t even need to operate on it,” he says, blinking at the IV running out of Finn’s hand. “The X-ray showed too much damage to your spinal cord. However, they did take out the bone fractures that lodged in your muscles to prevent internal bleeding.” 

There is no moisture in Finn’s mouth. He takes his hand out of Poe’s. “I won’t be able to stand up,” he says. 

“Yes.” 

“I won’t be able to walk.” 

“Yes,” Poe says, and he doesn’t even look apologetic about it. He looks like he’s trying too hard to keep the tears hidden. 

Finn folds his own hands in his lap, and stares straight at the ceiling. “I want to see the doctor,” he says, emotionless. 

“Finn,” Poe says, resting his hands on the railing, “it’s not a terrible outcome.” 

“All I wanted,” Finn says, voice breaking on the last word, “was to escape the First Order. All I wanted was to be normal. I will never be normal now.” 

“Normal is overrated, okay?” Poe blurts out. “Look, I — we kissed, okay, and it means something. Doesn’t it?” 

“I thought it did.” 

Poe purses his lips. “Well,” he says, more delicately than before. “I see.” 

Finn doesn’t react as Poe touches his arm, one last time. 

“See you around, Finn,” Poe says, and turns around. “I’ll call in the doctor.” 

Finn doesn’t say anything to him as he leaves. 

After the room is empty, he breaks down in tears. 

* 

Finn has nothing to do all day. 

General Organa visits him and tells him that he’s welcome to stay at the Resistance base as long as he’d like, but there will only be a skeleton staff here, as most of the pilots and soldiers are leaving to search for the First Order. 

Finn thanks her gratefully. He’s assigned his own room on the ground floor, with easy accessibility for his ancient wheelchair. His forearms burn as he rolls himself around, using the metal railings placed everywhere to heave himself to and from his chair. 

Sometimes, in his dreams, he wakes up and can walk. In his dreams, he is ecstatic, and runs all the way to borrow an X-Wing to fly to wherever Poe ran away to. In his dreams, Poe wants to see him, doesn’t think of Finn as a crying wreck over nothing, doesn’t consider Finn crippled beyond repair. In his dreams, they share another kiss and hold each other’s hands. 

Holding Poe’s hand is the most intimate thing Finn has ever done with anyone. 

When Finn wakes up from these dreams, he accidentally tries to get up out of bed, and falls over the side more often than not. He pulls himself up onto his wheelchair by sheer will and wheel himself out of his room, out into the awning of grass in the middle of the camp, surrounded by trees and space. 

Solace is peaceful. 

Finn doesn’t visit the mess hall during regular hours, because he will see the pilots he tried to avoid until he was ‘better’. He will see them and they will recognize him, the hero of the Resistance, the one who suffered and paid almost everything for the cause. 

Finn never wanted to sacrifice anything for the Resistance. He just wanted to get away. 

Now he can’t escape from anything. 

The weeks blend into each other, a constant stream of missing meals and staying in bed, dehydrated and dizzy. One day, a doctor takes off his IV, telling Finn that he’s well enough to heal on his own. 

Finn stays in bed for two days to avoid the massive back pain every time he stretches out his arms. 

On the third day, a package arrives for him. One of Poe’s pilot friends brings it — well, wheels it — in for Finn, a smile on their face. 

“Dameron may be a cowardly shit who runs away at the first sign of conflict,” the pasty Twi’lek says, not flinching or acting differently because of Finn’s obvious injury, “but he cares about you, you know. He sent you something.” 

“I find that hard to believe,” Finn says, clenching his teeth. “He ran away when he heard the news.” 

The Twi'lek blinks at him. “You’re both idiots,” they say, shaking their head. “Dameron’s also an emotional shit, so he came crying to me over a beer before he left. He thought you didn’t want to see him any more, so he respected your wishes and left. But hey,” they shrug. “I don’t know either of you very well, so I’m just going to leave this here. And here’s the card that goes with it.” 

Finn smiles hesitantly at them as they leave. 

It’s true, he thinks. He didn’t want to see Poe before the man left. 

“Finn xx,” he reads, and a smile blossoms on his face before he can overthink it. “I was a stubborn shit when we parted ways in the medical ward — yes, you were — and I’m sorry that I insisted you automatically overcome the grieving stage. I don’t personally understand what you’re going through, but I absolutely respect you. You’re the same Finn who saved me from death, and a scar on your back isn’t going to change that. Here’s a chance for you to not let limited mobilization change anything, either. Enjoy! Poe xx.” 

Finn looks at the package the Twi’lek left in the corner. It’s a hover wheelchair. 

Finn flips to the back of the letter. “By the way,” he reads, “I heard there’s a therapy group that meets at 2200 hours at the mess hall to discuss PTSD and wartime injuries and the like. If you want to express your grief in a safe place, that’s a chance for you.” 

His bedside clock reads 2130, and before Finn can doubt this, he puts Poe’s letter in his pocket and drags himself out of bed via the pull-up bars positioned almost like monkey bars on his ceiling, sitting down in the hover wheelchair. 

Finn presses the button, and the vehicle purrs to life. He can feel the reverberations of the engine shaking his hips, down to the point where he abruptly loses feeling. 

The hover wheelchair works by moving his dominant hand in different directions, so he narrowly avoids crashing into the wall as he accidentally starts the wheelchair at top speed. 

However, Finn leaves his room with a smile on his face for the first time in forever. 

* 

At the meeting, Finn is surrounded by a myriad of people with scars on their souls. There’s a young woman with one arm who says she had a voluntary amputation once the muscles were burnt beyond repair and is waiting for a robotic replacement. She’s the only one with an injury disability that is going to be reversed. The rest are people with unresponsive limbs, incurable autoimmune diseases, volatile PTSD, and visible scars that make them all different. 

A grizzly old man, the main mess hall chef and Blue Squadron commander, leads the discussion by recounting how he hasn’t had a good night of sleep in years, ever since the destruction of Alderaan, which he watched happen. He tells the rest of them how he wakes up in cold sweats, screaming and choking, and how it isn’t going to be cured. 

“Sleeping pills only increases the chances of being unable to rest when I’m incapable of getting them, like out in the field,” he tells an enraptured Finn. “There’s nothing practical I can do, not when I still have a high-risk job to do. If I decided to live a normal life, so many people would die on account of my inaction. While I value my own life, my main goal in life is to help others. That’s the only way I feel peace at my life decisions.” 

Finn nods. In the few days after leaving the First Order, he saved so many lives, including his own. He can see how doing that on a regular basis would be overwhelmingly more fulfilling than doing what little he can to save his own skin. 

* 

Finn wheels himself to the waterfall where he and Poe stood in each other’s presence, over a month ago. He’s gotten good enough control over the hover wheelchair that he doesn’t accidentally fly off the edge, but it’s a close call. 

He sits and stares at the same waterfall, the same water cascading upon the rocks, the same calm noises produced by the natural phenomenon. 

He remembers thinking that rainforests heal. 

He remembers Poe reaching out and holding his hand. 

God, how he misses holding Poe’s hand. 

Finn doesn’t know if the rainforest is a healing sight, or if it’s just the memory of being there that helps, but Finn doesn’t feel like bawling for the first time in forever. 

He wheels himself back over the jungle paths, remembering how Poe clutched his shoulder as he sped over bumps. Not any longer. 

At the end of the day, Finn showers in the communal showers, bare-ass naked on his waterproof wheelchair, and balances carefully on his unresponsive feet while gripping onto the railing as he washes himself down. 

When he goes to bed that night, he feels cleaner than ever before. He feels, finally, free of the First Order. 

There’s still a giant Poe-shaped hole in his heart. 

* 

It’s been two months since the pilots left to search for the remnants of the First Order, and the General has received a message that the pilots will be returning, unsuccessful in finding any survivors. When she tells the assembled skeleton crew of the Resistance this, she also winks and says, “They will be accompanied by another long-lost friend of ours.” 

There is only one name on everyone’s lips for the rest of the day: Luke Skywalker. 

Finn suppresses his nerves by playing a round of chess in the mess hall with Poe’s — and his — friends, drinking cans of beer with them as he demolishes them with superior tactics. The Twi’lek, who Finn now knows goes by many names, none of them pronounceable by humans in the least, slings an arm over his shoulder and whispers, giddy, “I bet Dameron’s dying to see you.” 

“Yeah,” Finn says, slightly tipsy and hope weighing heavily on his heart. “I hope so.” 

When dusk hits, the first X-Wings are seen on the horizon, and the Resistance pilots gather in the grass to watch as the streaking ships land with a large amount of pomp, dancing loops through the air before they settle on the ground. 

While everyone else is standing and cheering, Finn can see over their heads, adjusting the hovering mechanism so he sits a few inches above the row in front of him. 

As soon as the pilots disembark, the entire crowd goes wild, rushing from one of their friends to another. Around him, everyone is laughing and crying, extremes of giddy emotions flying. 

Finn can’t find Poe. 

Maybe Poe didn’t come back, after all. 

He slowly twirls in his hover wheelchair, frowning, pulling Poe Dameron’s (his own) jacket around his shoulders tighter, the crisp fall breeze on his face. 

There’s a tap on his shoulder, and Finn wheels around. 

“Poe,” he whispers in awe, and the man nods back. 

Over the months of his absence, Poe’s grown a scruffy beard, untamed and uncombed. His hair is longer, too, curling down the back of his head. 

Finn rehearsed everything he wants to say in his head, but he blurts out instead, “I’m so sorry about what happened, I can’t believe I said those things to you. I can’t believe what I thought of myself, and you — you were completely right. I pushed you away, I’m so sorry —” 

Poe envelops him in a hug, careful to avoid the healing saber wound. “I shouldn’t have left,” Poe says. “I was angry, too, and I shouldn’t have pushed you to heal, I shouldn’t have been so insistent, and you can’t believe how happy I am that you took my advice.” 

“The therapy sessions were the best thing I’ve ever done in my life,” Finn says seriously as they break contact, taking each other’s presence in. “I mean it. Thank you so much. I don’t know what I would do without you.” 

Without warning, Poe pulls him in for a kiss, tender and with feeling. Finn matches him, digging fingers into Poe’s orange jumpsuit, feeling the beard brush against him. 

“I’m so glad I have you back,” Finn says. He doesn’t know if he can stop saying it. 

Poe grins at him. 

In the background, Resistance members start to cheer and chant, “Skywalker! Skywalker!” 

Poe turns around, lacing his fingers with Finn, and Finn’s heart is so happy he’s about to burst. 

The last ship docks to the collective held breath of onlookers. Out of it steps Rey, wearing formal clothing that isn’t the desert robe Finn last saw her in, and behind her steps the one and only Luke Skywalker, donned in a hood and cloak. 

The crowd cheers, and General Organa embraces him in front of the crowd. When they separate, she’s grinning like Finn has never seen her, and Skywalker is also smiling. 

The fabled Jedi turns to the crowd and raises a hand of greeting. The crowd goes ballistic. 

Finn can see that the hand is a metal prosthetic, and has just enough time to feel a bubble of kinship ignite his chest before Poe raises their own hands in a triumphant greeting back. 

If Luke Skywalker, the most important man in the universe, is disabled, there’s hope for Finn yet. 

He reaches over and pulls Poe into another kiss. 

  


**Author's Note:**

> If you liked this, please follow me at my [tumblr](http://www.tylerjosephsghost.tumblr.com).


End file.
